Long-range planner with eyes on TV
 

Hi guys. I know most of you will think I'm a little crazy for looking quite this far down the road, but we need to get a handle on what our retirement is going to cost, so I'm doing my research. My wife and I are at least 5-7 years from being able to leave our current home in NC (we are in the midst of an extensive DIY remodel). We have visited the Villages on many occasions (my parents live just up the road at Spruce Creek), and have even taken the tour. We love the lifestyle. I think the lynch-pin for me was seeing the wood shop. I have a decent shop of my own but could happily sell all that in order to downsize and use a communal shop.

I love the idea that everything is a golf-cart ride away. I can honestly imagine a day where we get rid of our cars altogether and just use a cart (or two) and just rent a car on the odd occasion where we need to drive somewhere too far for the cart but too close for a plane!

I mentioned 5-7 years to finish our house and sell, but the other major hurdle is that we have 4100 sq ft of house (plus attic, basement and a BARN) full of stuff! How in the world do folks cut all that back to fit into 900 sq ft? I feel like we need to have a 5-year-long yard sale!

On the personal side, you may have noticed from my avatar and nickname that I am a professional Santa Claus. My wife and I have two dachshunds who we treat as our children and travel via RV so that we can vacation with them. I am a huge Disney fan and love camping at Disney World's Fort Wilderness Campground.

Anyhow, I have about a zillion questions, and realize an introduction is not the place to ask them so I will wrap this up.

The difficulty of living the lifestyle for someone accustomed to wide open space and lots of elbow room and a lifetime of collecting stuff is....
you have to give it all up to live the lifestyle, unless you can afford a million or more for property.
There is controversy over where you can and can't walk your dogs, you cannot put up a fence, the neighbors may report you for anything you do on your property that they dislike, there is almost no shade, prices for property are quite higher than comparable housing nearby in Florida, and you definitely can't keep the rv at your house.

Now some others will tell you how much they got rid of. If I had it to do over, I would not bring a stick of furniture except heirlooms.

There are some courtyard Villas with two car garages that are in the 1700 sq ft range. Courtyard generally work well for two dogs.

Downsizing is difficult but not impossible if you actually make up your mind to do it. We started looking at retirement communities a good five years before retirement. That's a good thing to do. Good luck.

Don't allow a big house and "stuff" you don't need to rule your life. It was supposed to serve you, not the other way around.

With all the stuff in the house and barn, once you've picked out what would fit in a minivan with the back and side windows bare, get an auctioneering company to sell it all in one day on auction.

Otherwise it's gonna be months and even years of "Well who's gonna take THIS thing nobody can lift and they won't even pay $5 for it??"

Bringing no furniture and buying new or gently used living room, dining room and bedroom groups here makes it refreshing to come, too. A few visits to Bargains & Treasures in Nov. and Dec. will show you how many people bring dark old furniture that's too big or dated like the 1970's and they're selling it because they shouldn't have paid $1 a pound to bring it. Visits there will also show where all 1970s and 1990s china cabinets die.

But I should add: the resale and consignment furniture stores have beautiful and unusual and expensive, barely used things, too. It's a fun way to get nice things affordably.

:beer3: I agree your stuff can actually consume you. We had to "fight" our stuff before downsizing but you can do it and win a whole new lifestyle. We have friends who never really fought and they are still letting all their stuff consume them. Can't help someone who won't help themselves.

You come in this world with nothing and you go out with nothing.

I don't think that you're crazy at all. I'm keep telling my 30 year old son and his wife and my 40 something sister and her husband that they should start planning on moving down here now.

I wish I had made better plans.

I am fully in the "letting go" frame of mind. I could happily pack a couple of bags and walk away tomorrow if someone wanted to cut us a check for everything, as-is! My wife, well, the fingers might need a bit of prying, LOL! Really, she is not overly attached to much of the stuff, she just can't stand the idea of not getting full-market compensation for every little thing! So thinning down is going to be a struggle. STUFF can become very smothering.

And, of course, I realize that our "housing dollar" can go further elsewhere, but we're not really buying "housing". Housing at TV seems kind of like a stateroom on a cruise ship... you're not there for the room, you're there for the cruise. Or at least that's my perception as an outsider. I guess if you're a big entertainer then investing a lot in the house makes sense, but that isn't us. In fact, I'm afraid we gravitate in the opposite direction; having ROOM for STUFF and private activities tends to isolate us. I'd much rather sell my wood shop and make friends who do woodworking than buy a retirement home that can accommodate my solitary hobbies.

As for the RVing, we do enjoy it and will probably keep doing it for several years, at least until the dogs are gone, but at some point we would certainly leave it behind too. My wife worries about my driving it now, I can just imagine how it might be in 10 years. I know there are several storage options nearby (thanks to TOTV).

I must say, this concerns me: Really? I can understand voicing complaints about breeches of covenant, but other stuff too? This concerns me. For instance, I love doing a big Christmas display, and I know the covenants spell out some specifics of what is allowed and for how long, but is it likely that someone is going to make my life hell even if I stay within the rules? I know there is at least one house in TV that does a big, animated light display and that gave me some encouragement.

Anyway, a lot to think about, but plenty of time to do it, too. Thanks for the welcomes!

I think neighbors reporting you for something they dislike is exaggerated.
Reporting for breaking the covenents is another thing.

Downsizing just plan sucks!

We closed on our dream home there in Feb and we are back in Utah still closing up this house. It it a hell of a lot of work!

After multiple attempts to sell, or give away many lovely antiques that we actually used during the "country style" deorating era during which we raised our kids, we finally had a consignment shop pick them all up yesterday. Now this includes my sterling flatware and Lenox China.

I thought I would feel great remorse and doom when they left. But Yahoo!! I am so glad they are gone!!! None of our kids wanted them. Each took one or two items that meant something to them personally. But I just feel like the weight of the world has lifted from my shoulders!!

It is true that "things" can truly weigh you down emotionally. It is very liberating to know that I am not responsible for these "things" any longer.

Certainly I am hoping for some payment down the road. But truthfully when that truck pulled away and I saw the empty LR I practically jumped for joy. Each item was beautiful and had great memories, but if we don't want them and our kids don't want them, they were simply a source of angst for us. One more thing to deal with before we could actually move our lives down there.

We are one step closer...... Still have another month or two to get this house ready for new tenants, realistically, before we can pack our Prius and head out. Can't wait!!!

Moral of the story; things are just things, not of inherent value, unless YOU see that value in them.

For us, the value we find important is the future of our lives and lifestyle in The Villages. We are very excited about the next chapter. I would have driven off with just my suitcase already if I could have!!

Starting to downsize is very painful. We have collected so much "stuff" in 45 yrs of marriage. But after choosing the few things we really wanted to move and packing them up, we had a sparsely packed 16ft POD. It will be fun to start fresh down there. We would have hated to drag all this "stuff" with us and then realize that we no longer wanted or needed all of those things!

We are starting a new chapter and want a clean slate. It is a great feeling!!!!

Good luck!!

We bought 5 years prior to moving here and it is hard to believe we have been here 8 months full time! We started cleaning out the day we bought our home in TV. You have time on your side. Start cleaning out. Decide what you really want to hang on to and what is important for you to keep. In the beginning I kept things I thought we would want to bring with us and then every year that passed we let more and more go. I can honestly say there is nothing we left behind that I wished we would have kept. It is very freeing to let things go, down size and have a fresh start!

We live in very "wide open space" with lifetimes of " stuff" and the fine art of downsizing is an art unpracticed and truly unwelcome.

However, the time to face reality is rapidly closing in and we are reluctantly embracing the inevitable need to truly downsize and eventually re-locate.

We've discussed "our furniture" and it's cross country transport costs and moving hassles with the relative ease of acquiring new furnishings locally.

Heirlooms, under the scrutiny of downsizing with a few notable exceptions, seem less precious and sentimental than before the need to downsize cast it's cold shadow.

The idea of moving is an easier pill to swallow than the idea of downsizing to be able to move.

we are 5 years away also...each year two rooms are done..gone thru and boxes packed for TV...given away or to the curb..this way it does not seem so doom and glum

We moved a lot when I was a kid. My mother took pictures of the things that were important to her but could not be moved. Those photo albums gave her her memories and she wasn't tied down to "stuff". Really is a beautiful way to do things.

Good luck on the downsizing and convince your wife that she's not going to get full value. Doesn't happen on used items unless true antiques or there is some other value to them. Check out local garage sales and find out what things actually sell for (not the asking price).

In the meantime, visit when you can. TV is pretty irresistible, isn't it?

Maybe if you have an estate sale company come to your house and go over all your belongings, they can advise your wife of the price they would bring on the market. Hearing it from someone in the business can be an eye opener for her, and maybe this will jump-start her into the culling process.

And maybe she will decide that the estate sale is the way to go, in which case you won't have to do much of anything at all, because they take care of everything, including the dispersal to charities of items not sold. I wish we had had the time to go that route.

I do not think that neighbors will report you for every little thing you do. True, we do have some people who dislike dogs, etc., but they are mainly in the minority and mostly only dislike the dog's owners because they allow their dogs onto others' property. If you are a responsible dog owner, you will not have a problem.

Our neighborhood, for example, is a live-and-let-live area. I think the majority are like that. Some of the newer areas may be different.

Two dachshunds would fit perfectly into a courtyard villa (they are fenced). You could have three bedrooms and two baths, and a (very) few of them have two-car garages.

Good luck to you!

Well, most of our STUFF was purchased either at Garage Sales or on eBay, and my wife has the uncanny ability to remember the price she paid for EVERY LAST THING! So yeah, she has a pretty good idea what an item CAN fetch, if the right buyer happens along. I think my strategy with her is going to be: every time we finish a room, we need to "dress" it for sale, staging furniture and a few key decorative items, all of which we'd sell with the house or at a pre-sale estate sale, and then we close the door and leave it closed. Until now the process has been to empty the room we're going to work on by moving all the stuff to other rooms (making them unusable for the piles) and then when the room approaches completion the stuff from the next room flows into the finished one. I'd like to sequester us to using just four or five rooms of about the size of a house we might pick at TV. Stock those rooms with just the items we are likely to want once we move (or an equivalent of something we might replace it with in FL). Wish me luck with that!

I certainly understand the cathartic release by getting rid of things that have been weighing you down. And agree with the idea of holding onto the pictures rather than the things. A few months ago I went through my high school yearbooks and took pictures of several of the pages and then threw the books out. It was tough to put them in the bin, but when the truck dumped them I felt a huge relief, like I'd been carry those thing around in a backpack and someone just took them out and I felt like I could dance. I had been carrying those 8, super-heavy books around for about 10 moves over decades without ever looking in them but feeling responsible to keep them. Why? A lot of my friends thought I was crazy for ditching them, others applauded me. I applauded me. And more importantly it freed me up to look at other stuff and say "if I could get rid of my yearbooks, I can easily get rid of X". Digital pictures are small! So are MP3s. I have hundreds of Cds but I can't remember the last time I put a CD in a player. They are all digitized and live in my computer/phone/ipod so why do I still need those stacks of plastic? We are going to have one helluva yard sale this spring!